Guest Blog By LydiaRae_and_DominicBear

I’ve always had dreams of having my own family, since being a young girl I have had a way with children, I love them and they seem to love me! So much so that I studied childcare after leaving school in 2011 and haven’t looked back since. I have worked in nurseries since being 16 and doing that only made my desire to become a mother even stronger, I’d watch the families arriving to pick up their children and feel a sense of envy seeing how much love those children brought into their families lives. I wanted that to and in 2017 my dreams to become a mother became a reality, only it was one I never expected to be living.

On the 18th November 2017 at 35 weeks our first baby, our precious son Dominic Anthony Entwistle was born beautiful and still at 11pm weighing a Tiny 5lb 3oz. He was far more perfect than I could ever had imagined. He changed my life and ignited a fire within me that I never knew that I had, he made me a mother, but I knew my empty arms needed to be filled I couldn’t go on being a mother who could only hold her child in her heart so as soon as my 1st post-partum period was over I wanted to start trying for a baby again.

In January 2018, Myself and Ryan decided to take a break to our favourite place in Shropshire, we stayed in a log cabin with a hot tub and had a naughty weekend away in the hopes we’d conceive our rainbow baby, low and behold just two weeks later POSITIVE I was pregnant again but this time I was absolutely terrified, I could not lose another baby no matter the gestation, I needed this baby so much because without it I didn’t feel that I had a purpose. The weeks and months soon passed by, they weren’t easy by any means from being told id possibly already miscarried the baby (which I hadn’t) to bleeding heavily one evening at 7 weeks pregnant and being rushed for an emergency scan, having an anterior placenta AND a baby that preferred chilling instead of kicking me like I really hoped she would to keep me sane, it was the most tense I had ever been in my entire life because as much as I wanted to keep my baby safe I knew deep down that I was in no control. However, our little miracle, our beautiful daughter Lydia was born happy and healthy on September 9th 2018. She really is a dream come true but parenting after loss doesn’t come without its fair share of ups and massive downs. Becoming a mummy to a baby born after the death of their sibling has hands down been the most confusing experience for me, I never knew that it was possible to feel so damn lucky & full of happiness yet completely empty and consumed with guilt, grief and heartache all at the same time. I’ll admit that in those first few weeks of Lydia coming into the world, I struggled to allow myself to bond with her out of fear of her dying to. I told myself that if I didn’t become too attached to her then she’d be safe, I was scared of loving my child too much because I didn’t want her to die, it makes no sense whatsoever to me now but I guess that it was my way of protecting her.

Lets skip to today, my cheeky baby girl is 9 months old and I could not be prouder of the little person she is becoming, she’s makes me smile every single day and she makes those dark days bright again, no one has ever made me feel the way she does, I can laugh through the tears that fall when missing her brother becomes a little too much to cope with, just looking into her big blue eyes reminds me that I am strong enough to get through those moments. What I went through to get her here, putting myself through pregnancy after loss, that took fight. Lydia gave me so much hope and she continues to give me the strength I need when I feel as though the weight of the world is on my shoulders. I have so much love in my heart for both my babies, without our little Dominic Bear, I wouldn’t be who I am today, he made me a mother of a different kind but a mother nonetheless.